In 2001, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) started experimenting with methods for applying market-based concepts to intelligence. One such project, DARPA’s Future Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP) program tested whether prediction markets, markets in which people bet on the likelihood of future events, could be used to improve upon existing approaches to preparing strategic intelligence. The program was cancelled in the summer of 2003 under a barrage of congressional criticism. Senators Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan accused the Pentagon of wasting taxpayer dollars on “terrorism betting parlors,” and that “Spending millions of dollars on some kind of fantasy league terror game is absurd and, frankly, ought to make every American angry.”
Americans need not have been angry about FutureMAP. It was neither a terrorism betting parlor nor a fantasy league. Rather, it was an experiment to see whether market-generated predictions could improve upon conventional approaches to forecasting. Since 1988, traders in the Iowa Electronic Markets have been betting with remarkable accuracy on the likely winner of the US presidential elections. Eli Lilly, a major pharmaceutical company, found that prediction markets outdid conventional methods in forecasting outcomes of drug research and development efforts. Google recently announced that it was using prediction markets to “forecast product launch dates, new office openings, and many other things of strategic importance.”
Isn't it ironic that the mob was so wrong about prediction markets? FutureMAP should have anticipated that reaction.
The decision to cancel FutureMAP was at the very least premature, if not wrong-headed. The bulk of evidence on prediction markets demonstrate that they are reliable aggregators of disparate and dispersed information and can result in forecasts that are more accurate than those of experts. If so, prediction markets can substantially contribute to US Intelligence Community strategic and tactical intelligence work.
The price of college long ago outstripped the value of these goods.
In 1979, according to the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, a 30-year-old college graduate earned 17 percent more than a 30-year-old high-school grad. Now the gap is over 50 percent.
Remember that barely one-third of New York City's eighth-graders can read and do basic math. Then, read this book.
Back to the linked article:
In recent decades, the biggest rewards have gone to those whose intelligence is deployable in new directions on short notice, not to those who are locked into a single marketable skill, however thoroughly learned and accredited.
This is not the same thing as being a generalist, mind you.
Method for monitoring internet dissemination of image, video and/or audio files | US Patent 7171016
Topic: Technology
10:55 pm EST, Feb 26, 2007
An automated monitoring service downloads image files (including, e.g., graphic and video files) and audio files from various Internet sites, and checks these files for the presence of embedded digital watermark data. When found, such data is decoded and used to identify the proprietor of each watermarked file. The proprietors are alerted to the results of the monitoring operation, often apprising such proprietors of unknown distribution of their image/video/audio properties.
This is being associated with YouTube. It also ties in with other recent discussions here.
Abalone is a thinking board game, sold up to 4 millions pieces in 30 countries. Ranked "Game of the decade" at the "Festival international des jeux" (International Game Festival) in 1998, it is easy to understand, and universal.
We asked 100 writers and thinkers to answer the following question: Left and right defined the 20th century. What's next? The pessimism of their responses is striking: almost nobody expects the world to get better in the coming decades, and many think it will get worse
Gary Bredow's documentary High Tech Soul: The Creation of Techno Music, a labor of love that chronicles techno's genesis via nuanced interviews and smart cultural context.
The film features: Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Eddie (Flashin) Fowlkes, Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills, John Acquaviva, Carl Cox, Carl Craig, Blake Baxter, Stacey Pullen, Thomas Barnett, Matthew Dear, Anthony "Shake" Shakir, Keith Tucker, Delano Smith, Mike Archer, Derrick Thompson, Mike Clark, Alan Oldham, Laura Gavoor, Himawari, Scan 7, Kenny Larkin, Stacey "Hotwax" Hale, Claus Bachor, Electrifying Mojo, Niko Marks, Barbara Deyo, Dan Sordyl, Sam Valenti, Ron Murphy, George Baker, and Kwame Kilpatrick.
Tea may have been inappropriately marketed a decade ago, but today no other commodity is better poised to capitalize on a convergence of societal trends. In one marketing narrative, tea is touted as a multifaceted health aid and as a salve for those who wish to rebalance a life accustomed to speed. In another, it is pitched as worldly, gourmet, and, when it is organic and fair trade, even virtuous. In one moment tea acts as a social lubricant, and in the next it occupies the center of personal ritual. Taken collectively, these approaches reveal-as much as they deliberately and shrewdly exploit-the contemporary American social moment.
Idea rats include Duncan Watts, Michael Schrage, Clay Shirky, and David Weinberger.
Our annual survey of emerging ideas considers how nanotechnology will affect commerce, what role hope plays in leadership, and why, in an age that practically enshrines accountability, we need to beware of "accountabalism."
Check back next week for full text online, or pick up a copy at the newsstand.
Herding the Mob Online recommendation systems are growing up - and the blackhats are moving in. By Annalee Newitz Coming 3/1/2007
Be More Than You Can Be DARPA has developed some of the coolest weaponry for the US military. Now it's going to upgrade the soldiers themselves. By Noah Shachtman Coming 3/9/2007
As younger people reveal their private lives on the Internet, the older generation looks on with alarm and misapprehension not seen since the early days of rock and roll. The future belongs to the uninhibited.
